“Since we have been united with him in his death, we will also be raised to life as he was.” Romans 6:5 NLT 

Footsteps #310 V5 is a powerful thought – “united with Christ.” In John 15:1-8, Jesus talked about being united to the vine, and ‘abiding in Him.” Just as the parent vine sends up sap and nutrients into a grafted branch, so Christ supplies the needs of those who have accepted His sacrifice by faith and given their lives to Him. The ongoing Christian life entirely depends on union with Christ, just as a grafted branch can survive only by remaining in union with the vine. Branches lying next to a vine receive no nourishment. Branches merely in sight of the vine obtain none of the life-giving nutrients that only the vine can supply. But some of us who need to be united with Christ never get quite close enough to Him to be energised and enlivened. I need to ask myself, “Am I really united to the vine, or do I just hang around the vine? How much time do I spend each day in some sort of intimate relationship with Christ through prayer, Bible reading, or meditation?” Or is my spirituality anemic and withering?  Has our “old self been crucified with Him?”(v6). Jesus spoke of essential discipleship in Matt.16:24-25. 

Modern people miss the stark meaning that passage had for the disciples. The idea of being crucified doesn’t do much to our 21st-century imagination. We have never seen a crucifixion. To us the word is dead. But not for the disciples. When they saw a cohort of Roman soldiers escorting a man through town carrying part of a cross, they knew it was a one-way trip. They considered the cross to be the cruellest and most humiliating of deaths – and one that the ruling Romans were more than willing to use to keep troublesome areas such as Palestine under control. 

To Jesus and the disciples, the cross meant crucifixion. It symbolised death and nothing else. When Paul speaks of “our old self” being crucified, he is referring to that self-centred attitude and lifestyle that puts ourselves at the centre of our life, that places our pleasures and desires ahead of God and concern for other people. 

Christ had His cross, we have ours. He died on His for our sins, in which he had no share; and we die on ours to all pride, self-reliance, and self-seeking, that we might partake in His life. 

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